[WikiEN-l] What proportion of articles are stubs?

[MuZemike]

Short answer: I think we have made a step in the right direction by 
getting five decently-expanded articles as a result of ten stubs. 
However, what about the ones that cannot be expanded? That leads to my 
"long answer" below:

It depends on the expandability of the remaining stubs. Are they able to 
be expanded via reliable sources to a decently-sized encyclopedia 
article? One thing I have observed about the creation of stubs (besides 
from newcomers, which normally they are "hit or miss" on expandability 
due to their relative lack of experience with WP or with wikis in 
general), this is assumption or even prediction that 'they can possibly 
be expanded' or 'they might be some sources out there'.

I would generally find such a premise behind stub-creation as 
unsatisfactory content creation/expansion; however, I come from a belief 
that Wikipedia's focus should be on the amount of raw, sourced content 
as opposed to the raw number of articles that can be created. To put in 
a more concrete way, any given Wikipedia article is not precisely '1 
unit of knowledge' (Google Knol can sue me later for ripping off their 
terminology); that is, our article on "Abraham Lincoln" contains much 
more verifiable information than, say, "Venezuela at the 2010 Pan 
American Games".

-MuZemike

On 11/29/2010 11:33 AM, Charles Matthews wrote:
> Stubs and how to handle them seem to be controversial still (or again),
> which is rather surprising given that we have been going nearly a decade
> now. I'd like to ask how many articles still are stubs, by some sensible
> standard?
>
> Points arise from that, clearly. But I'm hearing quite a lot recently
> from the "glass half empty" people. You know, ten short stubs are
> created, and a year later five are still stubby, five are much improved.
> Are we glad to have five new substantial articles, or embarrassed to
> have persistent five stubs? So has this made things proportionately
> better or worse? Discuss.
>
> Charles
>
>
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